


Home

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Series: Then and Now [8]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk
Genre: Avengers Tower to be, Battle of New York, Found Family, Homecoming, Homelessness, Running Away, Suicidal Thoughts, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 04:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2455496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce spent so long running away from the monster in his head that he never thought he would find home again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

If you do something long enough, it becomes part of your way of life. Depending on whether it's a big thing or a small thing, it can become your way of life. For Bruce Banner, running had become his way of life. 

He'd lost track of the number of countries he had gone through, the languages he had scattered words in. Sometimes he knew more of a regional dialect than he did whatever the official language was supposed to be. Some of the languages didn't have names. Even with a memory for faces which was as good as his was, he couldn't remember everyone. He would get scattered flashes. The woman in the mountain village in northern India, cradling her infant in her arms, the one everyone thought had been born dead until he did what he needed to do. The gap toothed smile of the girl who had appointed herself to be his assistant in Cambodia, the pierced faces of the native tribe in Brazil who had found him when he woke up somewhere in the Amazon and had taken him in rather than killing him. 

No matter how many places he went through, though, he could never find home. He could never stop looking over his shoulder, never start putting down roots. He couldn't afford to get close to people. He was a monster, and getting close to monsters only caused pain. He was a doctor. He was meant to cure pain. Every patient he treated helped lessen his own just a little, drew him further from the gun he had dreamed of as a solution for longer than he could remember. Suicide was not a romantic notion, but it had seemed so simple for so long, a backup plan he had never thought he would need... only to find that, after his life had changed, that way out was yet another thing which had been taken from him. 

He glanced around the living room of the apartment he'd been given, a little smile playing on his lips. Tony had spared no expense, on this or the lab downstairs. He hadn't been kidding about R&D being like Candyland, and it was a little difficult to adjust to being settled after all this time, let alone being dropped back into the world of science.

When he followed that little girl he had, perhaps, been more trusting than he should have been. It had been long enough that he wanted to let his guard down a little, wanted to believe it might finally be okay. Besides, being a doctor, he could hardly have ignored her cry for help. 

Just as everything had finally been calming down, he was dragged back into a world he wanted nothing more than to leave behind, but the longer he spent in that world, the more he realised that it wasn't what he had expected it to be.

He wasn't in a cage, and although his consent hadn't exactly been freely given, nothing had been said or done which gave him a reason to doubt the Director's assertions that he would be gone when this was all over. They had called him in because it was armageddon if they did not, they had called him in because he was an expert in this field and they needed that expertise. They had not called him for Hulk. For people who knew what he was, that was a big departure, and it wasn't one he would be taking for granted.

That being said, most people seemed to be dancing around the subject. He was fairly relieved when Tony Stark confronted it head on and dismissed it just as easily. He had never felt Hulk was a joking matter before, and nor had anyone else, but here was a man, a puny man whose mind was much greater than his stature, with a hole in his chest... who felt comfortable enough to joke, to tease, to be honest about the big green elephant in the room. 

It had been a long time since anyone who knew both sides of him had had faith in him, and Bruce wasn't sure how to feel. 

Then the attack on the helicarrier happened, and Hulk came out as a response to the threat... but rather than destroying Natasha, he attempted to resist. He turned away. Bruce couldn't help but watch the footage of that again and again when the war was over, confronted with the proof that his alter ego was not a completely mindless beast. He was animalistic, yes, but he was not uncontrollable, not without mercy... and Bruce had no idea how to feel. He was reeling. 

Tony was the reason he went back. Tony and the fact that, as a doctor, he couldn't justify the sacrifice of millions of lives for his own comfort, particularly not knowing that if he did nothing now, then the destruction, the pain, the slavery that would follow would find him sooner or later, and there would be nothing he could do about it since death was not an escape. 

He went back for Tony, but he found a team who welcomed him, who trusted him implicitly, and trusted Hulk just as much. When the dust settled, they didn't turn their backs, didn't regard it as him having fulfilled his use and therefore being no more concern of theirs. And when Tony made the invitation to move into the tower, Bruce turned the idea over and over in his mind. He had given up the idea of home long ago, but if he was ever going to have a home again, there was no doubt that it was with these people. This team. This broken family who understood what it was like to wander lost, and to finally have somewhere to belong.


End file.
